"Oz" was about life in prison, but what people know from Oz is sort of hard. "I don't think in the first book, I wrote about what it means to reach for beauty," he says. "You see a bunch of grown men running around playing football and all ages." He's been locked up for 25 years; one friend defended him by drawing roses on envelopes with an ink pen.
Dwayne Betts was a 16-year-old in solitary confinement when a fellow inmate slid a book of poetry under his cell door. What happened next is an astounding story of transformation: from desperation to the discovery of beauty, even behind bars. Listen as the lawyer, prison reform advocate, and award-winning poet explains to EconTalk host Russ Roberts why he's on a mission to bring books--and beauty--into prisons. They also discuss Betts's latest book, Redaction, a collaboration with the artist Titus Kaphar.